The role of building materials in improved flood resilience and routes for implementation

This paper reports on work developed under the EC FP7 project FloodProBE “Technologies for the cost effective protection of the built environment”. Across and outside Europe, urban flood resilience guidelines acknowledge the benefits of resilient building materials as a way to limit damage and speed up recovery from floods; however most existing classification systems are only qualitative and not transparent. This stems from the very limited data on performance, the inappropriate standard testing of materials with regard to flood exposure and the absence of approved testing protocols at European level. Regulation and practices on building resilience in a range of countries are discussed and outline cost benefit analysis is presented focusing on urban critical infrastructure buildings. A roadmap for overcoming technical barriers to the improved acceptance and implementation of building flood resilience is delineated, including suggestions for new European Norms on flood resilient buildings and materials.